Abstract
NATURAL APPETITE~~ IN AN article entitled Natural Necessitation of the Human Will, which appeared in two numbers of THE THOMIST/ the author, Father Robert P. Sullivan, 0. P., takes issue with the present writer over the correct understanding of St. Thomas' teaching on natural desire. The main points of disagreement are two. The first concerns the nature of natural desire in general: is it movement in the proper sense of the term, or is it relation and not movement, the transcendental relation every nature and power of nature has to its end? The second main point of disagreement concerns the natural appetite of the will and of the sensitive appetite. Has the will, for example, only one natural appetite, which always follows intellectual cognition in its subject, or are there two natural appetites of the will; the one innate, which is a relation that does not depend upon prior cognition in its subject, and the other the elicited appetite described by the Commentators, which depends upon prior intellectual cognition? The first part of Father Sullivan's article 2 contains a clear and able treatment of the problem of the number of objects willed by natural necessity in the teaching of St. Thomas Aquinas. In the second, concluding, portion Father Sullivan defends the views of the great Commentators that innate natural appetite means only relation without prior cognition as a necessary prerequisite in its subject, even in the case of the will; while the elicited natural appetite of the will or of *In presenting the reply of Fr. O'Connor to the criticism of Fr. Sullivan, the Editors merely wish to present the considered opinions on both sides of the question, without expressing judgment on the conclusions of either author.-ED. 1 THE THOMIST, XIV (1951), 351-399; 490-528. This study subsequently appeared under the title "Man's Thirst for Good," Thomistic Studies, n. 4 (Newman Press, 1952). 2 Loc. cit., 364-399. 361 362 WILLIAM R. o'CONNOR the sensitive appetite is an activity that follows cognition. The opposite view he regards as erroneous.3 Besides the great Commentators Father Sullivan has on his side many authors who see in the innate natural appetite only the ordination of one thing to another, or a proportion between one and another.4 Dom Laporta in an article that dealt with this question 5 divided natural appetite into ontologie and elicited; ontologie natural appetite is not an act but only a transcendental relation or ordination of finality. Maquart, however, disagrees with this understanding of St. Thomas' teaching on natural appetite. He cites against it the statement in De Veritate, q. 25, a. 1, that natural appetite is "a certain inclination and order to something suitable to itself." He grants that it is a relation or order but there is more to it than this. It is something dynamic: an active inclination to a proportioned end and a principle of movement in the order of execution.e A recent study of this question by Enrico di S. Teresa, C. D., while presenting peculiar features of its own, agrees with this dynamic conception of natural appetite. It sees in the teaching of St. Thomas Aquinas a single natural appetite that is always a non-cognitional, innate inclination impressed upon all things by God, the author of nature. This one natural appetite is more than a mere order or transcendental relation of a potency to its act. It adds to this the note of a really existing inclination towards a natural end or operation. It never requires prior cognition in its subject, not even in th('; case of the will. Only the elicited appetite has this requirement.7 3 Loc. cit., 5fl7. 4 Cf. L. De Raeymaeker, Metaphysica Generalis, I (flnd ed.; Louvain, 1935), p. 72: " Quo latissimo sensu appetitus vocatur appetitus naturalis atque comprehensio ejus simplicissima est: tantummodo significat ordinationem rmius ad aliud, proportionem unius cum alio, convenientiam inter plura." 5 A. Laporta, O.S.B., "Les notions d'appetit nature! et de puissance obedientielle chez saint Thomas d'Aquin," Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses, 5 (1928), 42. 6 F. X. Maquart, Elementa Philosophiae, 11, Philosophia Naturolis (Paris, 1937), p. 42. 7 Enrico di S. Teresa...
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